Thursday, May 2, 2013

Riri Woo -Marketing 101

Mac put their Rihanna red lipstick, Riri Woo on the site at 9:00 am pst and it sold out within hours. Yes, I write too much about MAC right now but I'm obsessed with their marketing.

Keeping it simple, they took a top selling red, added a celebrity and a slight change in color (which no one has seen since it's online only, sold out and not even shipped yet), limited availability and a little hype through willing makeup bloggers.

It's just a red lipstick...now listed at about $50 and up on eBay, up from the sales price of $15. And it hasn't seemingly shipped yet...based on the fact that I got some and have no shipping confirmation.

Consumers could get one at a time so had to order multiple times if they wanted more than one. But MAC offers free shipping for all order (love you for that MAC) so it didn't matter cost wise...only time commitment wise.

My lesson - without focusing too much on lipstick again (but lipstick might be the best marketing case study ever).

Offer a good product but not too much of it. As I heard today, desperation shows. MAC constantly sells out of their limited editions by leaving some money on the table. They could produce more products in a collection; instead, they offer more sold out collections, with fewer available in each. Check eBay to see how that works for them...people want what they can't have.

I should change this blog name to "lipstick chronicles" but for how much I write about books...